Smith America. 463 



larly remarkable, as the same men enumerate five distinct 

 species of peccary, of which two only have hitherto been 

 recognised by natm'alists, but to which our author intends 

 adding a third. 



Me of the Chinese. M. Roulin commences his disquisi- 

 tion upon the me of the Chinese [Jig. 92.), which has hitherto 



been considered as an ima- 

 ginative chimera invented by 

 that extraordinary people, 

 with the following observa- 

 tion : — It is not alone in the 

 new continent, that the his- 

 tory of the tapir has been 

 mingled with that of fabulous 

 animals. The marvellous me 

 of the Chinese authors, with 

 the trunk of the elephant, the 

 eyes of the rhinoceros, and 

 the feet of the tiger; which gnaws iron and copper, and eats 

 the largest serpents, is, as has been well judged by M. Abel 

 Remusat*, nothing more nor less than a tapir; but, says 

 our author in continuation, I do not believe, with that zoolo- 

 gist, that the tapir is an inhabitant of China. A small animal, 

 as a serpent, a lizard, or a mouse, might escape our researches ; 

 but it is unlikely that so large a quadruped should exist in 

 China unknown to Europeans. The history of the m^ is 

 undoubtedly founded upon an incomplete description, and a 

 rude representation, of the Malacca tapir. 



Representations of the me may frequently be seen engraven 

 upon the utensils of the Chinese ; printed in their stuffs, and 

 sculptured upon their amulets, which are usually formed of 

 jade. One may easily conceive, continues M. Roulin, in 

 these rude representations, that the large feet of the tapir, 

 divided into toes, closely imitate the claws of a cat ; that the 

 spots (with which all young tapirs are variegated) appear to 

 resemble, and may be easily arranged to imitate, those of a 

 leopard ; that the trunk, exaggerated in the original outline, and 

 still more increased in length by copyists, may have been manu- 

 factured into that of an elephant ; and that the tail (which is 



* The idea that the me was derived from a tapir is by no means original 

 either with M. Remusat or M. Roulin j for, even by the evidence of a 

 French author, M. Lesson, the credit of the discovery is due to a native 

 of our own country. That author says : — "In the figure of the me of the 

 Chinese, an Englishman thinks he recognises a tapir, which he has figured 

 in the Asiatic Journal, under the name of the Tapirus sinensis." {Manuel de 

 Mammalogie, p. 326.) 



